Queens of the Stone Age Look Road-Ready In ‘Tonight Show’ Performance: Watch
Cold blue light is a bold choice for a late-night stage, and it paid off here. It turned the whole performance into something closer to a club show than a talk-show spot, which is exactly the trick a band like Queens of the Stone Age needs to pull off. They've been doing this long enough that "lean and mean" is the right read: no wasted motion, no filler, just the riff doing the work.
I keep thinking about what it means to be road-ready now. Touring is brutal, and a band that comes out of it sounding tight is a band that has decided the live show is the point. I'd want to know which song they picked, because the choice tells you where their head is at. A deep cut says one thing, a single says another.
Mostly I just like that a rock band can still walk onto a brightly lit talk show and make it feel like midnight. It's a small trick, and I'm glad they pulled it off.